Jan Assmann

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Jan Assmann
Assmann in 2018
Born
Johann Christoph Assmann

(1938-07-07)7 July 1938
Died19 February 2024(2024-02-19) (aged 85)
SpouseAleida Assmann
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic work
Discipline
Sub-discipline
Institutions

Johann Christoph "Jan" Assmann (7 July 1938 – 19 February 2024) was a German

.

Life and works

Assmann studied Egyptology and classical archaeology in

In the 1990s, Assmann and his wife

Assmann died on 19 February 2024, at the age of 85.[4]

Writings on Egyptian and other religions

Assmann suggested that the ancient Egyptian religion had a more significant influence on Judaism than is generally acknowledged.[5] He used the term "normative inversion" to suggest that some aspects of Judaism were formulated in direct reaction to Egyptian practices and theology. He ascribed the principle of normative inversion to a principle established by Manetho which was used by Maimonides in his references to the Sabians. His book The Price of Monotheism received some criticism for his notion of The Mosaic Distinction.[6] He too no longer held this theory, at least not in its original form (specifically, the mosaic aspect).[7]

Awards

Publications

German: Ma`at: Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im alten Ägypten. Munich 1990 (Arabic Translation 1996).
trans.: Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997; 1998)
Religion and Cultural Memory: Ten Studies (Cultural Memory in the Present) trans. Rodney Livingstone, SUP (2005)
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, trans. David Lorton (2006)
trans. Robert Savage: The Mosaic Distinction or The Price of Monotheism (SUP, 2009)
Books in English

References

  1. ^ "Unbenanntes Dokument". Retrieved 21 September 2014.
  2. ^ "Kurzvita Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jan Assmann". Retrieved 21 September 2014.
  3. ^ Assmann, Jan. "Monotheism as Anti-Cosmotheism". The Price of Monotheism.
  4. ^ Jan Assmann ist tot (Jan Assmann ist dead) Zeitonline
  5. ^ The God Question: Jan Assmann's 'The Mosaic Distinction' and the Return of the Repressed in the "Post-Secular" Age Hollweck, Thomas. "The God Question: Jan Assmann's 'The Mosaic Distinction' and the Return of the Repressed" (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2 September 2004)
  6. . In my book Moses the Egyptian, which I wrote in California 20 years ago, I tried to define the conceptual core of the Exodus narrative as the "Mosaic distinction" between true and false religion or true and false Gods (Assmann 1997; see also Assmann 2007, 2010). This theory has met with much criticism and I would not hold it any longer. The distinction as such, and as a defining feature of monotheism, still seems to me irrefutable, but I would no longer call it "mosaic." It is true that the distinction between true and false in religion seems somehow implied in the prohibition of the worship of other gods and images, but it becomes a question of truth only later in antiquity with a certain concept of revelation... Ifthere is any "Mosaic distinction," it is the distinction between matrimonial faithfulness and adultery, political loyalty and apostasy, filial love and rebellion, and, in this sense, between friend and foe, love and wrath.
  7. ^ "Assmanns aufgenommen". Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German). Munich. dpa. 23 October 2020. Retrieved 25 October 2020.

External links